It is standard to mount a hand shower on a vertical wall-mounted rod for stationary use of the hand shower. Normally a releasable clamp is provided for moving the hand shower up and down on the rod to adjust its vertical position.
Commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 5,318,263 describes a rod assembly for mounting a hand shower on a wall that has an elongated rod formed at each end with a transversely throughgoing and laterally closed hole and respective holder bodies each formed with a seat in which the respective end of the rod is complementarily engageable. Each body is formed with a passage alignable with the hole of the respective rod end when same is fitted thereto. Respective screws engageable through the aligned holes and passages of the rod and bodies with the wall secure the rod to the bodies and the bodies to the wall.
This system is used with a hand shower having a support stem and mounting bracket of the type described in commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 5,265,833. This mounting bracket for a hand shower having a support stem has a support adapted to be fixed to the wall-mount rod, a holder formed with a forked seat shaped to receive the hand-shower stem, and interengaging formations on the holder and support for pivoting of the holder on the support about a normally horizontal axis while retaining the holder and support against relative axial movement. An array of radially extending ridges formed on the support, surrounding the axis, and projecting toward the holder engage with complementary ridges formed on a flange of a retaining element rotationally coupled to the holder. A locking bolt axially fixed in the support axially presses the retaining-element ridges against the support ridges so that the holder can be pivoted about the axis on the support with elastic deformation of the flange.
Thus with this system the rod can be solidly mounted on the wall without the mounting screws being visible. In addition prior to installation the assembly is a stable rigid structure that is easy to handle. It furthermore can be disassembled fairly easily, for instance, to add a soap-dish fixture to the rod.
The initial installation of such a rod assembly is fairly tricky however. Two holes must be formed in a wall, often using a masonry bit on ceramic tile, at an exact vertical spacing from each other and one vertically directly above the other. If either of the holes is slightly off, the installation will not work.